Last week, I blogged about my first week in Portugal and my thoughts about Pessoa stating that travel is for those who can’t feel. Today, I understand his sentiments a little too well. Rather than agreeing that those who can’t feel travel instead, I think that travel is a danger for those who feel. Although it has only been 24 hours, I miss Lisbon. I miss the yellow plums in the courtyard of the villa where I stayed, I miss my view of the Tagus, I miss Santini’s gelato, I miss the Fábula’s, but mostly I miss the friends I made there. In fact, I missed them before I left. On the last day of the conference, I skipped out on a lot of activities or sat in the back of the room because I couldn’t bear the idea of seeing anyone I cared about. Any time I spent with my new friends hurt because I was making more memories that I would soon lose.
The Portuguese have a word for this kind of sweet sadness: saudade. Usually associated with longing and often with place, saudade is hopeful even in the face of the certainty that what was lost will never be recovered. I knew this feeling before I knew the word, and now I feel overly familiar with the term. On the last night, on the terrace bar of the Hotel do Chiado, we all made promises of when we would see each other again, took pictures, and drank ourselves joyful. Of course we may all see each other again, but we will never be together again quite like that. We may meet in new cities, make new memories, and create new opportunities for saudade, but it won’t ever be exactly the same as these two weeks we spent together in Portugal learning about fado, dancing, getting lost, finding ourselves, trying octopus and sardines for the first or thirtieth time, drinking vinho verde, and scaring away pigeons perched on the shoulders of poets and saints.
A friend of mine said that the life of a teacher is one of continual departure. Every year they watch another group of students that they’ve grown to care about—students who’ve had tea with them or watched their cats or spent hours in their office talking—move on to whatever’s next in their lives. I think this is true of anyone who takes on Pessoa’s challenge to both travel and feel at the same time, to meet new people, to love those people, and to watch those people leave. Because despite those losses, isn’t the life of a teacher or a traveler richer because of those experiences? Lisbon is unique in its beauty, but it is not the only place in my life where I have made good friends that I had to leave.
Writers always live lives of continual departure, whether they teach, travel or stay at home. Writers have to let go of work they care about. I have saudade for lines I couldn’t save. I have saudade for poems that failed. I have saudade for poems I finished and loved. I have saudade for dusk on the Rossio, for the cold water of Cascais, for Amy, Paula, BJ, Ricardo, Melissa, Marisol, Sally, even Doña Rosa. I miss you all the way you were yesterday. I hope I will see you again tomorrow.
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Traci! My heart aches. This was so beautiful, it brought tears to my eyes. Obrigada amiga, I feel the same way, you articulated it perfectly
beijos e abraços… Ate mais! (and there will be more!)